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Essay Instructions: Writing Assignment


After reading the two "Ozymandias" poems, write an essay reflecting on the poems in which you analyze their similarities and differences. Incorporate into your discussion some of the ideas of John Berger, as they are presented in "Ways of Seeing."

Essay Instructions: Compare the cummings and Shelley poems here—they have something major in common; see if you can figure out what it is. Are there any current public figures you believe would fit into either of the two categories noted in the poems?


_Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias”,
_e.e. cummings, “Buffalo Bill’s Defunct”

Essay Instructions: write a 750-word essay that analyzes one poem from below. one-page should be a THESIS STATEMENT and outline for essay.

Choose one of the poems from the list below to address in your essay:
•The Lamb” or “The Tiger” or “The Chimney Sweeper” by William Blake
.“Journey of the Magi” by T. S. Eliot
•“God’s Grandeur” or “Pied Beauty” or “Spring” by Gerard Manley Hopkins
•“Ode on a Grecian Urn” or “Ode to a Nightingale” by John Keats
•“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
•“Sailing to Byzantium” by William Butler Yeats
•“The Road Not Taken” or “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost
•“It Sifts from Leaden Sieves” or “There’s No Frigate Like A Book” by Emily Dickinson (Gilbert and Gubar’s “The Freedom of Emily Dickinson” has more ideas to help write essay on Dickinson’s poetry).
•“Ulysses” by Alfred Lord Tennyson


the following questions for the poem can be a part if they directly support thesis statement.
•What is or are the themes of the poem?
•Is there a literal setting or situation in the poem? What lines from the poem tell the reader this information? What details does the author include?
•Is the setting symbolic?
•How would you describe the mood of the poem? What elements contribute to this mood?
•Is the title significant to the poem’s content or meaning? How?
•What major literary devices and figures of speech does the poet use to communicate the theme(s)?
•How are rhyme and other metrical devices used in the poem? Do they support the poem’s overall meaning? Why or why not?
•Is the identity of the poem’s narrator clear? How would you describe this person? What information, if any, does the author provide about him or her?
•Does the narrator seem to have a certain opinion of or attitude about the poem’s subject matter? How can you tell

Essay Instructions: (A) Look at how (through imagery? through figurative language? through sound devices? through tone? through setting and/or mood?) three (3) of the poets represented below convey generation-based perspectives in their
poems, OR (B) Reveal how the generation- based perspectives in three (3) of the poems are similar.

Choose one of the topics above on which to write a well-organized essay controlled by a clearly stated THESIS as the final sentence in the introduction paragraph. Make sure your essay contains at least six (6) quotations from the poems you examine and that the quotations are included grammatically, accurately, legitimately, and gracefully.

Whichever topic you choose, compose a thesis (a unique claim) that unifies your composition.


Dylan Thomas--- Do not go gentle into that good night ---1951
Linda Pastan-------Go Gentle----------------1982
Emily Dickinson---I heard a Fly Buzz—when I died ---1862,1896
Marilyn Nelson Waniek---Emily Dickinson’s Defunct--------1978
Elizabeth Bishop--------Sestina------------------1965
William Blake----------The Lamb-------------------1789
William Blake---------The Tyger---------------------1794
Gwendolyn Brooks-------We Real Cool------------------1950
Robert Frost-----------Birches--------------------------1916
Seamus Heaney ----------Mid-term Break-----------------1966
D. H. Lawrence -------------Piano-----------------------1918
Li-Young Lee ------I ask my mother to sing------------1986
Sharon Olds --------Rites of Passage -------------------1983
Percy Bysshe Shelley --------- Ozymandias -------------1818